Two Weeks

Now it's been two weeks since arriving in Brazil and the time is starting to fly by. So far, I haven't had too many cultural mishaps, at least I think not, except for two that I'll mention here.

1) The kiss on both cheeks: I'm still not sure when and where it's appropriate, and it's even more confusing because everyone is different. Sometimes it's when meeting people at school, others will just do one cheek and a hug. I made the mistake of greeting the maid with a kiss on the cheeks, which of course is a no-no. You don't kiss the help!
2) Putting toilet paper in the garbage bin, and not the toilet: I really should have remembered this from last time, but it took me a full week before I remembered that the Brazilian toilet plumbing system cannot handle toilet paper.

Besides that, everything is going extremely well. The only frustrating thing is coming to school at seven in the morning only to find that the class has been cancelled, or the teacher coming thirty minutes late (which is surprisingly common). But as long as I adjust my schedule to Brazilian time, I think I should be fine. More good news is that I already have work helping to translate a Master's thesis, and am going to be helping the professors at the Polytechnical School with a project they are working on to unify the Institute of Geosciences and the Engineering Department.

And to the delight of my host grandfather, I am gaining weight at a considerable rate.

It's like he told me tonight:

"Sò cachorro gosta de osso, Susi!" Translation: "Only dogs like bones, Susi!"